Deep Fritz

Chess Computer

Born: c. 1991

Birthplace: Germany

Best known as: The computer which battled Vladimir Kramnik in 2002

Deep Fritz is a chess-playing computer program backed by the German company ChessBase and written by two programmers, Frans Morsch and Mathias Feist. (The name Fritz was chosen by ChessBase's founder, Frederic Friedel. The word "deep" is a nod to another famous chess-playing computer, IBM's Deep Blue, which shocked the chess world by defeating grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997.) Deep Fritz jumped into the news in 2001 when a match was arranged between the computer and Russian chess expert Vladimir Kramnik. That match took place in Bahrain in October 2002, ending in a 4-4 tie between man and machine.

Extra credit: Despite the name similarity, Fritz is not a descendant of IBM's Deep Blue.